What is Elon Musk up to now that he is in charge?
That’s largely a wait and see, if only because Musk often changes his mind or backtracks on previous plans. Yet there is a common thread to discover. In addition to some potential business plans – such as paid ad-free accounts or adding additional capabilities – a looser moderation policy seems to be on the way. Under Musk, more needs to be said.
He alluded to the return of Donald Trump, who was permanently banned from the platform in 2021 after the storming of the Capitol. It seems to be a sign that he has fired Vijaya Gadde, who was responsible for closing Trump’s account. Musk himself says he wants to counter polarization by promoting dialogue between different camps, but critics fear that the amount of disinformation and hatred among Musk will increase.
Furthermore, there will probably be a significant exodus among the staff. It is unclear exactly how many people Musk himself wants to get rid of, but several employees have already left the company in recent months. “Either I end up working under a psychopath or the deal falls through and my shares halve in value,” one of these leavers explained to news site platformer together.
Can he just go about his business?
“The bird has been freed,” Musk tweeted after it was announced that he had definitively taken over Twitter. European Commissioner Thierry Breton, charged with regulating the internal market, responded quickly: ‘In Europe, the bird will fly according to our European rules.’
That’s right: in all countries where Twitter is active, it will have to comply with the laws in force there. But Twitter does have room to adopt a looser policy, says Joris van Hoboken, associate professor at the UvA’s Institute for Information Law. Often the house rules are stricter than is strictly legally necessary, so Twitter could loosen the reins so that it does exactly what the law requires. That Musk will follow a less strict course than his predecessors is ‘quite plausible’ for Van Hoboken.
Is Musk not taking financial risks if he chooses to let all the reins go on Twitter?
Just before the deal was finalized, Musk wrote a letter to advertisers, which accounts for almost all of the platform’s revenue: “Twitter obviously cannot become an anarchic chaos in which everything can be said without consequences.”
Many advertisers don’t want their brand to flaunt among the disinformation and hate speech. And they already have reasons to doubt Twitter as an advertising platform. For example, an internal document from the platform, in the hands of Reuters, shows that 13 percent of the number of Twitter messages now contain explicit nudity, which many advertisers prefer not to be associated with.
The number of users who log in almost daily and regularly post messages is decreasing in the meantime. A problem for Twitter, because these users are attractive to advertisers. If Musk cares about Twitter’s finances, now is a bad time to upset them too much.
Do you still want to be on Twitter?
For some, the final takeover of Twitter by Musk is reason to leave the platform, even though it is still unclear in which direction the platform will move. One of them is internet pioneer Marleen Stikker, who with her foundation weigh has been campaigning for years to point users to alternatives to major platforms.
She especially objects to the fact that a small group of wealthy people, such as Musk at Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg at Meta, have so much influence over the everyday communications of billions of people. “Moderation of our conversations is now taking place from Silicon Valley, on Twitter specifically from Musk’s perspective. An absurd thought.’
Stikker is therefore active on the relatively small Mastodon, a Twitter-like medium that consists of various platforms with varying house rules and where not one group or person is in charge. She temporarily sticks to Twitter so as not to lose her network in one fell swoop, and also advises others to build in a transition period. ‘I noticed that I was stuck: I received all kinds of interesting social, political and scientific messages via Twitter.’ Many people in her network are starting to switch with the acquisition of Musk, she notes.
Joris van Hoboken also finds it ‘worrying’ that billionaires are in charge of major social media, and in the case of Musk even seem to regard them as their private playground. “We don’t know what really drives him. Maybe he’s all about creating as much chaos as possible and wanting to derail things.’
The biggest risk for the near future is the departure of knowledgeable employees, thinks Van Hoboken. ‘The content moderation team consists of people with years of experience and a lot of expertise. They may well be thinking right now: ‘If this idiot takes the helm, I’m gone.’ What then remains of Twitter as a secure platform?’